A big week

Hi Reader,

This week is a big one for us at the Henrico Citizen: it’s our 22nd anniversary and our weeklong fall membership drive.

In some ways, it’s difficult to believe that it’s been 22 years since our first print edition rolled off the presses just nine days after the Sept. 11 attacks. In other ways, now more than three and a half years into our daily weekday online-only format, it seems much longer.

I started the Citizen in 2001 because I believed in the value of trustworthy, independent local news and the role that it can play in connecting a community – and I still do. It’s evident that you do, too: The month before COVID struck, about 20,000 people visited our website; last month, more than 130,000 did so. Our free daily weekday email newsletter subscriber list has grown by more than 8,000 people this year alone – to more than 20,000.

We believe that access to fair local news coverage is a fundamental human right, and it’s why we have never charged for access to any of our coverage. It’s also why, since switching to a fully digital format in 2020, we’ve focused most of our time on news coverage, at the expense of revenue-generation.

But a business cannot exist without reliable, sustainable sources of revenue. We’ve been operating these past 3+ years as a five-day-a-week news organization with a full-time-equivalency staff size of just three people. Though we’ve made it work, somehow, I realize that this constant level of production, with so few people, is unsustainable.

So today, and this week, I’m asking you to consider the value of the Henrico Citizen in your life during the past 22 days, or 22 months, or (for some of you) 22 years.

Have we helped inform you about this community? Have you taken action based upon something you read in the Citizen? Have you learned something about Henrico? Have you developed a stronger sense of connection to this community because of our coverage?

If the answer is yes, I would ask you to consider making a financial contribution to support our work.

You’ll be joining more than 325 other readers who have done so this year – and you’ll be making a significant impact on our ability to keep doing this work.

And as a special ‘thank you,’ we’ll have some different giveaways each day this week for those who give.

Today, give $10 or more, and we’ll send you a $10 gift certificate to Sandano’s Italian Sub Shop or The Beach House. And by giving any amount today through Saturday, you’ll also be entered to win a drawing for one of several larger prizes at the end of the week.

Thank you, in advance, for your consideration and support!

Yours in community,
Tom Lappas, publisher

P.S. – Watch your email each day this week to see which thank-you gifts we’ll be offering! And make a donation any time by clicking here.